[Tagging] football or soccer ?

M∡rtin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Thu Jul 1 10:08:29 BST 2010


2010/7/1 John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>:
>> we already do this with presets, and I don't like the concept either
>> ;-), I'm using the english JOSM version because of this. Part of the
>> "problem" in this thread derives exactly from this (soccer vs
>> football).
>
> You disagree with the translation someone else made, it doesn't
> necessarily mean it's a bad way to do it.


no, I don't generally disagree with the translations, the thing is:
(almost) every tag (at least of the ones in the presets) is documented
in the wiki in English, many of these definitions are not translated
into other languages. As long as you don't read and understand
English, it is pointless to "guess" the meaning and application of a
tag from it's (probably correct) translation, you will only introduce
errors resulting from misinterpretation of a single word --- like the
one you were describing in your reply (~"reading the wiki gives you
context what the pure tag doesn't"). And it's even worse: sometimes
there are translations of the definitions in the wiki but they
contradict the English version, be it that the "translator" had a
different opinion, or that one of the versions was changed afterwards,
or that it is simply uncomplete. In nearly all of these cases I'd
stick to the English version (unless it is a stub).

Furthermore I'd like to control the tags I'm setting. If I want to tag
a path in the mountains, I want to decide whether to set path or
footway. Or highway-classes for connection roads. Some time ago (I
hope that this is not the case any more), primary, secondary and
tertiary were translated in the German version into "Bundesstraße,
Landesstraße, Kreisstraße", which are administrative classifications
which only roughly correspond to the actual use of primary etc. in
OSM.

Probably we will need good translations to catch more (and probably
less educated) people, and to provide simple editors like one for
adding pois, but this should IMHO never be on the borderline of
tagging but could be nice for well documented, elaborated and
generally agreed tags.

cheers,
Martin




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